Accenture Helps Telstra significantly reduce IT Infrastructure Costs with High Performance Virtualization Platform

Telstras new virtualization shared service platform has simplified its IT management by centralizing the application infrastructure.

Overview
Australias leading telecommunications company, Telstra Corporation Ltd, owns and operates national fixed line, mobile, broadband and cable networks as well as several online businesses. The company supplies services to consumer, business, enterprise, government and wholesale customers. In 2009, it generated AUD$25.4 billion in revenue. In 2008, Telstra embarked on a redesign of some of its IT infrastructure to improve operational processes and reduce costs. Like many companies, Telstra was facing a number of infrastructure challenges data center capacity constraints, the need to lifecycle equipment efficiently and improve how it serviced demand from its business. Telstra worked with Accenture to define a program that would improve application sharing, condense resources and ensure ongoing performance of its backend systems by leveraging server virtualization technology.

A Server Virtualization Shared Service was designed, built and deployed to significantly reduce capital and operations costs associated with traditional servers and to improve system performance, improve storage utilization and provide a flexible infrastructure capable of responding more quickly to business demand. Accenture also supported Telstra to improve system management tools and processes and work with application owners to support the concept of server virtualization which enabled migration of old physical servers onto the newly built virtualization platform.

infrastructure, which lent itself to inflexible and inefficient processes that could have impacted the ability of Telstra to fully utilize its existing hardware investment. Legacy system costs also needed to be addressed, as the existing infrastructure was difficult to lifecycle or adapt to meet expanding business needs. Like many large IT organizations, Telstra IT aims to continuously reduce operational cost while delivering outstanding IT services to its business units.

How Accenture helped

Telstra turned to Accenture for its deep industry experience to address these business challenges. Accenture worked with Telstra to define and then implement the new virtualization environment including the migration of applications. In particular, Accentures team recognized the need for more effective system management, which would enable Telstra to operate a faster, more reliable and low cost IT infrastructure service.

Business Challenge
Telstra wanted to accelerate the lead time for IT deployments and reduce operational costs. The nature of the applications was limiting the ability to share server and storage infrastructure. Server deployments were taking several months with the existing infrastructure processes and tools, which impacted the rollout of new business applications. Applications were managed on siloed

Accenture completed the implementation for Telstra in three phases. First, an assessment of the server estate was completed in order to establish a clear cost baseline and identify virtualization candidates. The business case, which included detailed cost estimates, implementation timeline and Capex and Opex benefits, was produced for endorsement by Telstras IT leadership team. Performance criteria and key performance indicators were established to ensure business benefits would be measured and enable targets to be achieved. Second, a Server Virtualization Shared Service was designed, built and deployed in four strategic data center locations. A senior steering committee of Telstra and Accenture representatives was set up to guide the overall solution and ensure that timelines were met. The new capability was designed including the technical platform and more importantly organization, processes and system management tools.

Third, the Accenture team is conducting the physical to virtual server migration and the operation of the Shared Service. To date, the platform is hosting more than 1100 virtual servers which have been generated from either migrating existing virtual servers, migrating legacy physical servers into virtual servers or through new provisioning. The migrations from physical to virtual server are ongoing until target completion in 2010. As an additional benefit, a large number of servers have been identified and confirmed for decommissioning. Finally, Accenture is operating the Virtualization Shared Service.

The new capability ensures high availability as it better utilizes shared infrastructure through the built-in HA and load balancing capability of the underlying virtualization software. Telstra IT can now more easily overcome outages due to unexpected physical hardware failure. The new capability has also helped Telstra to make significant cost savings. This includes a reduction in server related capital investment by 70% and a reduction in operational cost for the virtual platform of 30 to 40% compared to the operational cost of the equivalent physical servers. Through its work with Accenture on this initiative and leveraging virtual infrastructure, Telstra is able to deliver faster and more cost effective IT solutions and is on the path to achieving high performance.

High performance delivered

Telstras new virtualization shared service platform has simplified its IT management by centralizing the application infrastructure. This allows staff to deploy, manage and operate server environments more quickly, efficiently and costeffectively by not having to deal with a physical legacy environment.

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About Accenture Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with more than 176,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the worlds most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. The company generated net revenues of US$21.58 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2009. Its home page is www.accenture.com.

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